Chapter 10

SURVEY METHODOLOGY

Introduction

In this chapter, the following key aspects of and steps taken during the execution of the study will be discussed:

origin and objectives of the study;

theoretical framework;

research strategy;

unit of analysis;

selection of respondents;

data collection

data analysis;

selection and training of fieldworkers; and

scientific status.

Objectives of the study

The primary objective of the study is to explore and describe the social reality of South African demobilised SANDF personnel, while the secondary objective is to provide policy relevant recommendations using available opportunities to minimise, if not remove, the key obstacles currently experienced by these former SANDF staff members in their attempts to reintegrate themselves into the South African society and make their contribution to its economy. A further objective is to provide policy advice in preparation for a possible future SANDF demobilisation exercise.

Theoretical framework

Since the social situation of the former combatants needed to be described, a suitable theoretical perspective was required that would guide the study to illuminate the world of this group of people. Symbolic interactionism was chosen as its conceptual assumptions provide the ideal framework for explorative research into the social world of these former combatants of which very little, if any knowledge exists in South Africa. Moreover, it allows the utilisation of a multi-methodological approach to decipher and describe this world.

Research strategy

For the greater part, the exploration of the social world of South African former combatants was conducted within a quantitative methodological framework supplemented by a qualitative approach. These two well-known and recognised approaches to research differ vastly from each other. In the ensuing discussion the key differences between the two approaches - as summarised by Schurink and Schurink - are outlined.74 The quantitative paradigm is based on positivism, which takes scientific explanation to be nomothetic (based on universal laws). Its main aims are to measure the social world objectively, to test hypotheses, and to predict and control human behaviour. In contrast, the qualitative paradigm stems from an anti-positivistic, interpretive approach, is idiographic, thus holistic in nature, and the main aim is to understand social life and the meaning that people attach to everyday life.

Unit of analysis

The present study‘s unit of analysis could be specified as the study of a group of South African former combatants:

during the first quarter of 2001 (a specific point in time);



of key characteristics (gender, age, race, occupational level, income and other demographic features);



interests (like receiving further training);



career chosen if given the opportunity;



assistance to find a job;



opinions/perceptions regarding a number of matters such as the extent of training received before leaving the SANDF, help to find employment after leaving it, whether the SANDF did enough to assist after leaving it;



feelings towards the Citizen Force, the commandos, and the Service Corps of the SANDF; and



actions like deciding to resign or demobilise, study further after leaving the SANDF, or seeking employment.

Selecting respondents from the population of interest

In social research, the focal group about whom scholars want to learn something is known as the population. This concept is used in the statistical rather than geographical sense. It is often used interchangeably with ‘universe’. While a population of interest or universe includes all elements or cases of human beings, collectives of individuals or groups, organisations, or social artefacts of a particular study, the population of interest in social research is normally composed of individuals. As already indicated, these individuals are considered as the unit of analysis.75

Since the universe of former combatants in South Africa since 1994 cannot be established, a random sample of representative cases could not be drawn for inclusion in the present study. Cases needed to be selected non-randomly. In order to ensure that some typical characteristics of former combatants are included in the sample, non-probability sampling was utilised. Quota sampling was first used to establish the following three sets of categories and areas from which the former combatants were selected:

key segments of demobilised SANDF personnel, i.e. the various military mustering from both statutory and non-statutory forces: MK, APLA and AZANLA;



key socio-demographic characteristics: age, gender, race and language; and



geographical areas: the South African provinces, as well as rural and urban areas.

Utilising purposive or judgmental sampling, subjective information was then obtained from veterans’ organisations and the South African Service Corps. A number of community organisations were used to identify potential respondents from the target group.

Finally, snowballing was also used, since potential respondents were identified by asking former combatants to name a few former combatants from their friendship networks as possible candidates for the study. They were also asked to assist the researchers in explaining the objectives and nature of the study to their friends and to ensure them that participating in the research would not harm them and would in fact be in the long-term advantage of all South African former combatants.

With the assistance of veterans’ organisations, the Service Corps, former combatants, interested family members, as well as community organisations in the provinces, 309 former combatants were finally included in the study. While the research results obtained from this sample of cases can not be generalised to apply to all South African former combatants, the researchers were convinced that sufficient respondents were recruited from the most typical categories of the former combatant population. It was felt that the sample would enable the exploration and description of the social world of local former combatants, as well as the construction of key profiles from those demobilised SADF staff, which would give rise to policy relevant recommendations. It must be pointed out, however, that the particular sampling techniques used in this study do not allow any of its research findings to be generalised to all former combatants in South Africa.

Data collection

Two well-known and recognised approaches to research were used in the study. While a quantitative method, the social survey, was principally employed to explore and describe the social world of South African former combatants, unstructured or qualitative methods in the form of open-ended questions included in the survey schedule, as well as fieldnotes and reports written by the fieldworkers were also utilised, albeit to a limited extent, to gather information.

The social survey

For the purpose of this study, the following definition of the social survey was used:

"The survey may be defined as a methodological technique that requires the systematic collection of data from populations or samples through the use of the interview or the self-administered questionnaire. The investigator approaches a sample of persons who have been exposed to a set of events or experiences and interviews them with respect to these experiences … [A] group of persons are observed at one point in time and questioned about their behaviours, attitudes, and beliefs with respect to a series of issues."76

In the present study, the following two types of surveys were used:

The individual interview: The fieldworkers visited the respondents at the places were they were found (for example, residences, work or other places) and completed former SANDF staff’s answers to previously constructed questions in a schedule.



The completion of individual questionnaires in a group context. On a number of occasions, it was decided that it was necessary to gather former SADF staff in groups at specific venues where they completed questionnaires in the presence of fieldworkers who explained certain questions and, when necessary, assisted those respondents who were illiterate.

Aspects of the social situation of former combatants (fields of interests, attitudes, perceptions, actions, background demographic information, among others) on which data was required, were carefully studied and converted into specific questions/items that formed part of a schedule. Since the goal in survey research is that every respondent should interpret both the questions and answers similarly, special attention was given both to the wording of the questions and their possible responses, as well as to their placement in the schedule. Finally, in outlining the items/questions, the two types of surveys were borne in mind.

Three strategies that proved to be very valuable to achieve this end, were:

discussions with informants (personnel of the SANDF), members of veterans’ organisations, and other people who were knowledgeable about former combatants;



reviews of previous research undertaken on the topic; and



a reality check and pre-testing.

The initial draft of the interview schedule was checked by conducting a focus group with a few of the former combatants who were willing to discuss the items or concepts that the researchers planned to include in the study. This focus group pointed out a number of ambiguities, hidden assumptions, or conceptual complexities that the researchers had overlooked. After these revisions were made, and the interviewers trained, a pilot test of the interview schedule was undertaken.

Qualitative methods

Bogdan and Biklen provide the following important views on qualitative data:

"The term data refers to the rough materials researchers collect from the world they are studying; they are the particulars that form the basis of analysis. Data include materials the people doing the study actively record, such as interview transcripts and participant observation fieldnotes. Data include what others have created and the researcher finds, such as diaries, photographs, official documents, and newspaper articles."77

For the purposes of this study, qualitative data is defined as:

rough material that the fieldworkers have gathered from particular aspects of former SANDF staff’s worlds;



material which the fieldworkers themselves have actively recorded;



any information that was gathered during the course of the study that was not expressed in numbers;



any human creation and production of former SANDF staff including, for example, words, letters, drawings, photographs, household garbage, and others;



descriptions of situations, events, people, interactions and observed behaviours;



direct quotations and excerpts from self-accounts made by former SANDF staff about their experiences, attitudes, beliefs and thoughts;



entire passages from fieldnotes; and



the meaning of the world to former SANDF staff expressed in their own words.

Four qualitative methods were employed in the study: participant observation, fieldnotes, fieldworker reports and, finally, open-ended questions included in the quantitative schedule.

Participant observation: Collecting data from research participants in their natural settings was especially helpful in obtaining some understanding of the social situations where former SANDF personnel lived and worked. This first-hand information also facilitated the interpretation of the qualitative data gathered by means of the schedule.



Fieldnotes: The mainstay of qualitative research is the written account of what researchers (fieldworkers) hear, see, experience, and think in the course of collecting and reflecting on the data in their studies.



Fieldworker reports: Since research, like all human behaviour, is subjective - the process of executing the study is in the hands of the fieldworkers and researchers - it is necessary to acknowledge and describe attempts made to minimise the effects of this subjectivity. In the present study, the fieldworkers were requested to compile their reports by, among others, speculating about what they learned - the themes that emerged, patterns that were present, additional ideas, and thoughts that came to mind. They were also requested to reflect on the study’s methods - information about the methods employed in the study, comments on fieldworker’s rapport with the research participants as well as the ups and downs encountered in the study. They were also asked to report on anything else that was regarded to be important to the study.



Open-ended questions included in the schedule: Literature on the techniques of face-to-face interviewing treats the interview as a pipeline for extracting and transmitting information from the respondent to the interviewer. In this way, the face-to-face interview helps in understanding the closed worlds of individuals, families, organisations, institutions and communities. Strictly speaking, the open-ended questions included in the schedule cannot be regarded as truly open-ended and qualitative, because only the answers are open-ended. In other words, a set of pre-formulated questions are generally carefully arranged and put to all the respondents in a fairly similar sequence. Nevertheless, this method was used in the present study. It generated valuable data from the perspective of former SANDF staff on their views and attitudes, as well as on how they cope with and make sense of their situation. The main advantage of these open-ended questions for the current study was that it ensured data that was obtained relatively systematically which, in turn, facilitated the comparison of the data.

Data storage

In the present study, researchers sorted and analysed the data manually. The main steps applied in the current study were:

A set of codes were developed that referred to the open-ended items, the guidelines for the fieldnotes included in the schedule, as well as to themes used in the fieldwork reports.



The verbatim answers in the schedule, fieldnotes and reports were studied and codes were provided according to the specific open-ended question asked during the interview, the particular guideline for the fieldnotes, and the specific heading used in the reports.



Quotable passages were marked.



Topics were taken one by one and the coded items in materials were studied to establish whether there were relationships or patterns between the various topics or codes.

Data analysis

The following definition of qualitative data analysis, provided by Bogdan and Biklen, portrays the key features of the process of making sense of the data in the current study:

"Data analysis is the process of systematically searching and arranging the interview transcripts, fieldnotes, and other materials that you accumulate to increase your own understanding of them and to enable you to present what you have discovered to others. Analysis involves working with data, organizing them, breaking them into manageable units, synthesising them, searching for patterns, discovering what is important and what is to be learned, and deciding what you will tell others. For most projects, the end products of research are dissertations, books, papers, presentations, or, in the case of applied research, plans for action. Data analysis moves you from the rambling pages of description to those products."78

Selection and training of fieldworkers

Fieldworkers or interviewers are the ‘foot soldiers’ in any research project, regardless of whether structured scheduled interviews or qualitative interviews are conducted. Consequently, it is crucial that they are selected carefully and trained properly. Careful attention to the selection and training of interviewers is time well spent. While anyone’s interview skills can be improved in a well-designed training programme, not everyone has the same ability to establish rapport quickly or has the social skills that accompany successful interviewing. Since the scientific interview is different from normal, everyday conversation, interviewers have to be taught how to read questions exactly as worded with no improvising. Promising young researchers who satisfactorily conducted interviews on previous occasions or were keen to be trained to conduct interviews, were approached with the view of using them to assist with collecting information from former combatants. Willem Schurink of the Social Sciences Consultancy (SSC) presented a three-day training course on various dimensions of social research, including the ‘general’ and ‘study-specific’ phases of interviewer training, discussed above, and other aspects of particular interest to the present study.

Data analysis

The inferential methods, or instruments used in the present study to make sense of the former combatant phenomenon are in accordance with the positivistic model used in the study that was already outlined. The data analysis is underpinned by the belief that quantitative data (survey research) enables the making of inferences about the population or sample surveyed. However, generalising the study’s research results to the larger group of demobilised SANDF personnel, as has already been pointed out, is not possible, since the sample on which these inferences are based is not representative of all demobilised SANDF personnel in South Africa. Such representivity was not possible, since information on demobilised soldiers is limited in the country. This is partly due to a lack of capacity and resources to build the necessary data base and partly because information on SANDF personnel is classified. This, of course, implies that, in any discussion of the current study’s findings, the analyses can at best be regarded as tentative and subject to further study.

Quality of data

In the light of the fact that social research, because it investigates human beings, is bound to include errors, it goes without saying that its main goal is to minimise observer effects or nuisance variables as far as possible. In order to minimise these effects or variables, it is necessary to maximise validity during each and every decision taken during the design and execution of the research. One way in which social researchers have attempted to improve the validity of their data sources is data triangulation, that is, when different types of data are used within one study to improve the data validity. As has already been pointed out, different methods were used in the study of South African former combatants, which enabled triangulation and thus gave rise to data with a high level of validity.

Conclusion

All attempts were made to minimise nuisance variables in the present study, and it is believed that these attempts were successful and the research findings can be regarded as valid. It must be emphasised, however, that because of the explorative nature of the study, these results, although valuable and insightful, should at best be regarded as tentative. Because of the current study’s scope, there are undoubtedly many aspects of the world of South African former combatants that still need to be unravelled. It is hoped that future researchers will undertake large-scale research of the circumstances of these former military personnel that will unpack the difficulties experienced by this group in their day-to-day living.